Government Senator Marc Bean recently called for a debate on the merits of decriminalising drugs in the wake of a report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy. A distinguished panel that wrote the report said the war on drugs had failed and recommended partial legalization as a solution to the blight of the illegal drugs trade on communities around the world. Not so fast, warn medics. Side effects of marijuana can include a heightened risk of psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, damage to memory and judgement and heart problems. Neurologist Dr Keith Chiappa said: “The use of marijuana, especially...

Epidemiologists showed decades ago that people raised in cities are more prone to mental disorders than those raised in the countryside. But neuroscientists have avoided studying the connection, preferring to leave the disorderly realm of the social environment to social scientists. A paper in this issue of Nature represents a pioneering foray across that divide. Using functional brain imaging, a group led by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg's Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, showed that specific brain structures in people from the city and the countryside respond differently to social stress (see pages 452 and...

A new military survey obtained by USA Today shows that U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan are reporting record levels of acute stress and low morale. The problem is most severe in servicemen and women who have been deployed multiple times. A third of them reported depression, anxiety or another serious mental health problem. Meanwhile, those reporting medium to very high morale dropped to 46.5 percent from 65.7 percent in 2005. Seventeen percent reported acute stress, compared to 6 percent in 2005. The survey also painted a bleak picture of the intense combat troops in Afghanistan engage in. More than 75...

Today the White House is hosting the first-ever meeting to focus specifically on transgender issues. The Office of Public Engagement (OPE) will meet with transgender activists and leaders to discuss federal policy on trans issues. Topics to be discussed include employment policy, access to health care, military policy, and immigration detention standards. Some activists have expressed concern in the past week that the meeting was to be held behind closed doors and without any press invited to cover the event, though OPE pointed out that most stakeholder meetings are off the record. Still, advocates are happy to be able to...

NEW YORK, April 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Teens who self-identify as homosexual are five times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to attempt suicide, according to a study released last week. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics online on April 18, was conducted in order to determine whether living in a gay friendly social environment affected the risk of a teen identifying as homosexual committing suicide. It found that teens in Â“unsupportiveÂ” social environments were 20 percent more at risk of attempting suicide than those in Â“supportiveÂ” environments. Â“This study documents an association between an objective measure of the...

(SALT LAKE CITY)-A new study implies some of the happiest states in the union also have the highest suicide rates and Utah is no exception. According to the study, Utah is the number one state in terms of residents’ well-being although it scored ninth in overall suicide rate as three other states also had top 10 rankings in both categories, including Colorado, Nevada and Wyoming. Researchers for this study, suggesting that living around people who are satisfied with their lives can result in misery for their neighbors, are cautioning against the assertion that misery really loves company. According to the...

After supporting husband Michael Douglas through his battle with throat cancer, Catherine Zeta-Jones needed medical care for herself. After “the stress of the past year,” her representative said in a statement, the movie star “made the decision to check into a mental health facility for a brief stay to treat her bipolar II disorder,” a condition similar to bipolar I disorder, characterized by mood swings from high to low. Zeta-Jones has been hit with a series of devastating events: In 2010, her stepson, Cameron Douglas, was sentenced to five years in prison on drug charges, and four months later, her...

It hardly seems necessary to catalog all of the current events that are fraying the nerves of the most sturdy among us. Unless, of course, you’re talking to the president, who is eerily unaffected by it all. The rate of joblessness and foreclosures in this country are enough to keep anyone up at night. That’s assuming you can remain entirely impervious to the massive disaster in Japan and the fact that the Middle East is in a state of dangerous upheaval. It’s not really possible to overstate the seriousness of the Mid East crisis, and not only because rising oil...

Oregon Rep. David Wu apologized Tuesday for sending photos of himself dressed in a tiger costume to aides, calling that and other behavior last fall “unprofessional” and “inappropriate” as his mental health suffered. “You shouldn’t ever send photographs of yourself in a Halloween costume, something you intend to wear to a private party a couple of nights later,” the Democrat said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” It’s just not professional, even when you’re joshing around with your kids a couple of nights before Halloween. I did send those photographs. It was unprofessional, inappropriate.” Half a dozen Wu staffers have quit...

....But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”... It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked...

New Study Denying Abortion-Mental Health Link Contains Flaws by Priscilla Coleman Danish researchers Munk-Olsen, Laursen, Pedersen, and colleagues will publish a study tomorrow in the New England Journal of Medicine, addressing the risk of mental health disorders in women who have a first trimester abortion and those who experience a first childbirth. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/01/26/new-study-denying-abortion-mental-health-link-contains-flaws

Day two in a three-day series Once or twice a semester, Dr. Chris Gunn comes across a student so unstable that he and his colleagues at Northern Arizona University get together and decide: Call the parents? Suspend? Have committed involuntarily for psychiatric care? Speculation has strongly leaned toward alleged Tucson mass shooter Jared Loughner as having untreated paranoid schizophrenia, and his behavior was erratic enough that his school, Pima Community College, suspended him until he could provide a mental health clearance. The propensity for people with serious mental illness to commit extreme violence like the kind seen in Tucson is...

The only competent analysis of the Tucson murderer I am aware of was done by Charles Krauthammer. In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize recipient for commentary, he is also a board-certified psychiatrist who was chief resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He states that the murderer is clearly a paranoid schizophrenic, with typical delusions of mind control by the government. Dr. Krauthammer went on to note that the murderer lived in his own self-created world and was not motivated by politics. To this I would add only that throughout history, psychotic individuals modified their delusions and hallucinations to suit...

(NewsCore) - Severe mental illness is more common among US college students than it was a decade ago, National Public Radio reported Monday. Citing statistics collected by the American Psychological Association, NPR reported that the number of students on psychiatric medicines has increased by more than 10 percentage points over the last 10 years. College counselors have reported a notable rise not only in the number of students seeking help for mental disorders, but also a rise in the severity of their illnesses. The author of the research added that in 1998, nearly all of the students seeking help at...

suntimes Don’t let shooter kill our rights Jacob Sullum jsullum@reason.com Jan 12, 2011 02:35AM Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of shooting 20 people outside a Tucson, Ariz., grocery store on Saturday, probably will never get a chance to create the “new money system” he discusses in one of his rambling YouTube videos. But he can still have an important effect on public policy — if we let him. After the shocking attack — which killed six people, including 9-year-old Christina Green, and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) — there was no shortage of knee-jerk proposals for preventing...

Yesterday, we talked about the Violence Policy Center's bizarre attempt to link concealed carry and suicide. That attempt continues not only the VPC's longstanding campaign to discredit defensive handgun carry, but also their efforts to portray restrictive gun laws as an important tool to reduce suicide (works great in Japan!). Suicide is, of course, a mental health issue, so perhaps now would be a good time to discuss the intersection of health care and "gun control." National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea recently noted a study claiming that one in five Americans suffers from mental illness--in many cases, supposedly, undiagnosed...

<p>YOUR **** RELIGION IS B****T AND YOUR GOD IS *%*&*% MAKE BELIEVE! I have exactly ZERO FEAR of what exists only in your rasist narrow simpleton mind. Your god is NOT AN OBJECTIVE REALITY and yet you keep pushing him on us. You are nothing but a bunch of stupid retarded bigotsï»¿ and hypicrites, PLEASE **$# OFF AND DIE. I am sick you your STUPID JEEEEEEESUS *%*&%* hijacking the legacy of the founding fathers to promote your controlling agenda. $&*^* YOUR STUPID &$&$* OF A GOD [long screed of swearing and curing and liberal slogans] ON YOURï»¿ IDIOT BI-BULL, IT BELONGETH IN DA TOILET! Are you so STUPID that you think quoting from theidiot BI-BULL will do anythimng besides make me LAUGH HYSTERICoLLY. The bi-BULL is a [more screaming and gibberish] that is good for nothing except wiping %&*^#. It is fiulled with STUPID, RIDICULOS errors and silly moronic fairy tales. It is the product of hateful rasist people. Its god is exclusive, racist, genocidal cunt of a monster whop loves only those who willingly ignore rational thought and becomeï»¿ his sheeple. HE DOESN'T EXIST!</p>

Two days ago, An elderly woman was murdered in front of her sister and onlookers on LA's metro gold line station in Little Tokyo. The station, recently opened a year ago under the new gold line extension into east LA now has its first big incident. An insane drug addicted and mentally ill homeless woman is now in custody for committing the murder. The killer, a woman named Jackkqueline Pogue committed the offense has a long history of mental illness not to mention an even longer criminal history. She had been thrown out of just about every shelter and welfare...

“More than 45 million Americans, or 20 percent of U.S. adults, had some form of mental illness last year,” a CNBC-hosted Reuters story informs us, citing a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or SAMHSA."Too many Americans are not getting the help they need and opportunities to prevent and intervene early are being missed," SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S. Hyde, J.D. declares in a press release announcing the national survey. "The consequences for individuals, families and communities can be devastating. If left untreated mental illnesses can result in disability, substance abuse, suicides, lost productivity, and family discord....

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 16) -- Betty Sugiyama was rushing to catch a train for a shopping trip when authorities say the unthinkable happened: A homeless woman leapt from a bench and shoved her onto the tracks. Witnesses said the woman then calmly returned to her seat as Sugiyama writhed in pain on the tracks with a cracked skull. The 84-year-old Little Tokyo resident died soon after, and the suspect was arrested on murder charges. A sister of Sugiyama who witnessed the attack remained stunned Tuesday that anyone would want to kill her friendly younger sibling, a Japanese-American who had grown...

Second incident at Old Saybrook store in 2 days A man is under arrest after police say he stood outside the Old Saybrook Walmart on Thursday and said he was "getting ready to start killing people." John Carlo, 28, of Pawcatuck, has been charged with breach of peace and threatening. Before police arrived, Carlo fled on foot. The area was cordoned off and a K-9 was called in to assist with the search. Carlo was finally found in a walk-in cooler at a nearby gas station. This is the second incident in as many days at this Walmart store. On...

In a comprehensive new study of mental health status and the use of mental health services by Californians, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that nearly one in five adults in the state -- about 4.9 million people -- said they needed help for a mental or emotional health problem. In addition, approximately one in 25, or more than 1 million, reported symptoms associated with serious psychological distress (SPD), which includes the most serious kinds of diagnosable mental health disorders

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2010 – Twenty-eight Medal of Honor recipients recently launched the “Medal of Honor – Speak Out” campaign to encourage troops struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries and other health problems to take advantage of services to help them. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipients dating back to World War II echo a common theme in video messages for today’s returning combat veterans: Take advantage of the resources now available to treat the unseen scars of war. “Make use of them,” they encourage today’s troops. “Stay strong, and don’t let...

Milwaukee County's top mental health administrator intentionally houses female patients with men known to be dangerous "because the presence of women reduces the likelihood of the men being violent," according to a county supervisor's letter obtained by the Journal Sentinel. John Chianelli, administrator of the county's Behavioral Health Division, told county supervisors during a closed-door session last month that segregating men and women would result in more violence. "It's a trade-off," he said. "Putting 24 aggressive male patients into a male-only unit would increase the level of violence in the unit." Chianelli's remarks came during a County Board committee called...

An average of 18 US military veterans are taking their lives every day as the Obama administration and the Pentagon grow increasingly defensive about the epidemic of suicides driven by Washington’s wars of aggression. The stunning figure was reported last week by the Army Times, citing officials in the US Veterans Affairs Department. The department estimates that there are 950 suicide attempts every month by veterans who are receiving treatment from the department. Of these, 7 percent succeed in taking their own lives, while 11 percent try to kill themselves again within nine months. The greatest growth in suicides has...

Tim Pawlenty, the pro-life Minnesota governor and potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate, is drawing cheers and jeers from pro-life and pro-abortion groups for declaring April as a month to help women negatively affected by their abortions. As LifeNews.com first reported two weeks ago, Pawlenty and Texas Gov. Rick Perry both declared April as Abortion Recovery/Awareness Month. Lisa Dudley, Director of Operation Outcry, a group that helps women who regret their abortions speak out, told LifeNews.com at the time that Pawlenty's move showed he has an "understanding of the consequences of abortion" and a " willingness to protect women and the...

Political correctness is on everyone's mind these days. We over emphasize the need to not offend anyone based on race, religion, gender, and a host of other reasons. We never wish to make fun of anyone related to appearance or behavior, and to be socially bereft of feelings will make you an outcast quicker than a snowball's chance of survival in summer. But have you ever been called "crazy" or "nuts" or "insane" even in jest? However, there are plenty of people that truly are.

On a dusty afternoon in a squalid U.S. Army base in eastern Baghdad, the world seemed to cave in on Spec. Joe Sanders. On daily patrols, soldiers around him were being killed and grievously wounded by improvised roadside bombs. The sweltering August heat and stink of Baghdad were oppressive. He was thousands of miles from home. And he had just learned that his wife -- his lifeline to the sane, normal world -- wanted a divorce. Alone in his barracks room at Forward Operating Base Rustamiyah, Sanders, a soft-spoken young man with a pleasant demeanor, seized his M-4 carbine,...

A phone call from a police negotiator that jolted David J. Pyles awake in the predawn hours of Monday continues to jangle the nerves of observers monitoring the way authorities took the Medford man into protective custody and seized his firearms. Pyles ...reclaimed his legally purchased weapons... he has contacted the Oregon Firearms Federation for possible legal assistance...the incident that landed Pyles in the hospital for a mental health evaluation and resulted in five of his guns being held by police for "safekeeping." "It's chilling, I don't know if this is just a gun case," Starrett said. "It's about whether...

I finally wrote a plan to keep myself out of the nuthouse. Here are some steps that you can use to write your own plan to Stop a Downward Bipolar Spiral. 1. Identify your pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that ends in a bipolar episode.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Workers with depression stay home sick more often than healthy colleagues, even when their disease is treated, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Tuesday. The report, commissioned by drug maker Sanofi Aventis, suggests that employers would benefit from better treatments of their workers for depression. Depression is the leading cause of disability among Americans aged 15 to 44, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. "Even when depressed patients are treated with antidepressants, there are substantial productivity losses. Therapies that can better manage depression may provide opportunities for savings to employers," the Thomson Reuters...

The longer you spend surfing the Web, the more unhappy you’re likely to be, says a new study from Great Britain that shows that Internet “addicts” are more likely to be depressed. Researchers analyzed Internet use and depression levels in more than 1,000 British residents between the ages of 16 and 51. Some 1.2% were labeled “Internet addicted” by researchers at Leeds University.

Given the protections of the ADA and the FMLA, there is no need to hesitate to disclose your bipolar condition to your employer. Federal Law gives you a legal right to request reasonable changes in your workplace that will enable you to perform your job duties and to request time off when you are actively suffering the symptoms of bipolar. Does this mean that you have the right to call off sick with a bad mood?

During a recent talk regarding my book, “Blessed with Bipolar,” I was stumped by the question, “How does a person get to where you are now from where you were in the psych ward?” I actually have a 380 page answer to that question. What stumped me was the question behind the question: “How do I get my bipolar daughter into treatment?”

New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows... --snip-- The F.D.A. has approved antipsychotic drugs for children specifically to treat schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. But they are more frequently prescribed to children for other, less extreme conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, aggression, persistent defiance or other so-called conduct disorders — especially when the...

The Army is severely short of enough mental health professionals to properly attend to soldiers after eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Pentagon and Congress are asking whether that shortage may have played a role in the ability of the accused Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, to elude detection despite a spotty work record and suspicious behavior. Hasan’s competence and radicalism stirred concern among his fellow students and superiors and he was counseled for proselytizing to his patients, but he nevertheless progressed in his schooling and his military career throughout his six years at...

Autism and schizophrenia may be two sides of the same coin, suggests a review of genetic data associated with the conditions. The finding could help design complementary treatments for the two disorders. Though autism was originally described as a form of schizophrenia a century ago, evidence for a link has remained equivocal. One theory puts the conditions at opposite ends of a developmental spectrum. To investigate, Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues gathered data on all known genetic variants associated with each condition, then looked for patterns of co-occurrence. The researchers found...

Early signs suggest the number of suicides in the U.S. crept up during the worst recession in decades, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of states that account for about 40% of the U.S. population. Available data, still incomplete, suggest that this recession, like past ones, coincided with an uptick in suicides. The data from 19 states find an increase in suicides in the recessionary year of 2008 from 2007. Those states historically account for about half of annual suicides in the U.S. Calls to suicide hotlines are rising. And suicides in the workplace and the military -- a...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Associated Press is reporting that a source has told them the shooting suspect in Thursday's attacks on the Fort Hood Army Post in Texas is Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, an Army mental health professional. The attacks on Ft. Hood left 12 people dead and 31 wounded. Authorities killed the gunman, who is said to be Hasan, and apprehended two other soldiers suspected in the attack. According to the AP, a defense official said Hasan was a mental health professional—either an Army psychologist or psychiatrist. It's not known if he was treating people at the post. The...

Study: 85 Percent of Women Say Abortions Cause Mental Health Issues London, England -- A new report from researchers at a university in New Zealand indicates 85 percent of women who had abortions report negative mental health issues as a result. The report is the latest from professor David Fergusson and his team showing abortions cause problems for women. http://www.LifeNews.com/int1371.html

Northwestern research finds drugs aim at wrong target CHICAGO --- More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief. Why? Because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and drugs designed to treat it aim at the wrong target, according to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The medications are like arrows shot at the outer rings of a bull's eye instead of the center. A study from the laboratory of long-time depression researcher Eva Redei, presented at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week, appears to topple two strongly held...

The evidence is mounting that the President is suffering from depression or worse. Here is a summary of the observable evidence: a. Anger is a classic symptom of depression. Remember the terribly angry speech on health care President Obama gave in September? b. Distancing oneself from reality is another symptom. Is not this clearly going on with the President and his apparent inability to address the serious issues in the war in Afghanistan? How is it otherwise conceivable that the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t even speak to his general in 70 days? Perhaps if things were going well in the war, we...

Because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have. Ralph and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital. One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool, Ralph suddenly jumped into the deep end. He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there. Edna promptly jumped in to save him. She swam to the bottom and pulled him out. When the Head Nurse Director became aware of Edna's heroic act she immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital, as she now...

The prevalence of mental health disorders in this country has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. Who is treating all of these patients? Clinical psychologists and therapists are charged with the task, but many are falling short by using methods that are out of date and lack scientific rigor. This is in part because many of the training programs—especially some Doctorate of Psychology (PsyD) programs and for-profit training centers—are not grounded in science. A new report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, by a panel of distinguished clinical scientists—Timothy Baker...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A woman charged in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping who was court-ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment will have a competency review hearing next month. A Utah district court calendar shows Wanda Eileen Barzee will appear before Judge Judith Atherton on Oct. 23. It will be the first time Barzee has appeared in court since doctors at the Utah State Hospital began to forcibly medicate her in May 2008 in an effort to make her competent. If Barzee remains incompetent for trial, the state could seek to have her civilly committed.

WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found. "Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry. "Not...